Background: Burger King on 600 block of Buckley Road, Aurora, Colorado (Google Maps). Inset: Eugene Robertson (Arapahoe County District Attorney).
A man who went on a shooting spree after he pulled a gun on an employee at a Burger King in Colorado after the worker refused to accept drugs as payment has been sentenced to a staggering 143 years in prison.
Eugene Robertson, 40, was convicted by a Colorado jury on eight counts, including attempted murder with extreme indifference, felony menacing, illegal discharge of a firearm, harassment, reckless endangerment and possession of a controlled substance, according to an Aug. 15 statement from the Arapahoe County District Attorney’s Office.
According to prosecutors, Robertson pulled up to a Burger King drive-thru window on Buckley Road in Aurora on Oct. 17, 2022, at around 11 p.m. He tried to pay for his meal with drugs, prosecutors say, and when the drive-thru employee refused, Robertson pulled out a gun and pointed it at the worker before eventually driving away.
Not long after that, police responded to a shooting at a 7-Eleven convenience store across the street from the Aurora Burger King.
“The store clerk said a man walked in and pointed a gun at his head. When the man noticed a television surveillance camera system, he shot the screen and left the store. In the parking lot, witnesses reported seeing the man shooting toward another person and his girlfriend before leaving,” the district attorney’s office said.
No one was injured in the shooting at that convenience store, but just after midnight, as police were on the lookout for a man matching Robertson’s description, police dispatchers received another emergency call. This time it was a woman calling from an apartment building on E. Kentucky Avenue, just minutes away from the convenience store.
She said that Robertson was knocking on her door and when she wouldn’t open up, he opened fire. Multiple people were in the home, but again prosecutors said no one was injured in the hail of gunfire. Police were searching the grounds of the apartment building when they spotted Robertson on foot.
He took off into some bushes but was quickly captured and arrested.
Eric Ross, a spokesman for 18th Judicial District Attorney John Kellner, told local NBC affiliate KOAA that 143-year-sentence handed down to Robertson was the right call because Robertson put a slew of victims in fear for their life in just a single evening.
“Jurors recognized the severity of the crimes this defendant committed,” Ross said. “We believe the judge imposed an appropriate sentence.”
A request for comment to Robertson’s attorney was not immediately returned to Law&Crime on Tuesday.
In April, The Sentinel reported that the Burger King employee who stared down the barrel of Robertson’s gun told police he thought he would be killed when he refused the man’s baggie of roughly 5 grams of methamphetamine.
Another witness told police that when Robertson came into the 7-Eleven after the foray at Burger King, it seemed like there was “something off” about him.
Robertson was “talking about God” and carried a Bible in his hands.
The witness also reportedly told police that he started getting into an argument with Robertson as he babbled on, and then Robertson drew his gun and aimed it squarely at the head of a store clerk.
Suddenly, Robertson redirected his gun and fired a shot at television displaying live surveillance footage from inside the store. The Sentinel reported that the witness inside the 7-Eleven told police he fled to his car to get his own handgun. As soon as Robertson walked out of the store, the men exchanged gunfire, though neither was injured.
When officers captured Robertson outside of the apartment complex where he had shot into his alleged friend’s house after she refused to let him in, remarkably, Robertson is alleged to have told police that he wasn’t physically hurt but his “feelings were hurt.”
When a jury convicted Robertson in April, senior deputy district attorney Taylor McCreary said it was a “miracle no one was seriously hurt or killed.”
Robertson was not a first-time offender. The Sentinel reported that prior to the crime spree in 2022, he had served a sentence of 84 months for felony distribution of crack cocaine, which made it illegal for him to possess a firearm. The report also noted at the time of his 2022 arrest, there was an outstanding warrant in connection with a March 2021 incident in which he is said to have been involved in a car crash and shooting before fleeing the scene.
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